The Dark Is Rising

The Dark Is Rising #2 The dark is rising sequence (2)

by Susan Cooper

Paperback, 244 pages

English language

Published Dec. 13, 1973 by Scholastic.

ISBN:: 978-0-590-43319-8
OCLC Number:: 22875364

(41 reviews)

On his eleventh birthday Will Stanton discovers that he is the last of the Old Ones, destined to seek the six magical Signs that will enable the Old Ones to triumph over the evil forces of the Dark.

45 editions

anka.trini reviewed The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

Review of 'The Dark is Rising' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

1.5 stars
After the amazing first two chapters everything went downhill.
The book started out very atmospheric and eerie. The description of the landscape and of the animals' strange behaviour were really promising.
But the book let me down way too soon. The plot was rather simple but the execution made it quite complicated. Moreover, the writing style and tone somewhat changed and the novel became more and more a bore and a tedious read. Yet I dragged on and on because I was hoping for the magnificence of the first chapters to return. That sadly never happened, though.

2022 was full of bad reads for me. No surprise I'm ending it with another disappointing read.

Stephen Hayes reviewed The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

None

4 stars

When a reviewer of one of my books, Of Wheels and Witches, compared it with this one, and suggested that it might have been influenced by the The Dark is Rising sequence, I thought I'd better read it. So I read [b:Over Sea, Under Stone|11312|Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark is Rising, #1)|Susan Cooper|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1443993959l/11312.SY75.jpg|742] which I enjoyed a lot, and now have read this one, which I didn't enjoy quite so much, and in writing this I'm trying to work out why I gave the first book 5 stars, and this one only 4.

There is little to link the two books. Over Sea, under Stone was set in Cornwall, this one is set in Buckinghamshire, with a completely different set of characters. Will Stanton is the youngest of a family of nine chldren, and discovers , on the day before his 11th birthday, that he is an "Old One" and that he has a quest to perform, to collect six signs made of different materials.

He is helped in this by a more experienced Old One, Merryman Lyon, who is the only character who seems to have been in Over Sea, Under Stone, and another family who live on a nearby farm, whom he discovers are also Old Ones, and he is hindered in his task by a couple of characters called The Walker and The Rider.

The book never explains who the Old Ones are, but we are told that they have a lot of superpowers not accessible to ordinary people, and the young/old Will Stanton learns how to use these powers by instantly absorbing a magic book. And this is, I think, why I liked this story less than Over See, Under Stone. The children in that book, unlike Will Stanton, are ordinary children with no superpowers. As G.K. Chesterton puts it, in his book Orthodoxy:

...oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Will Stanton, however

... wondered how to explain to an elder brother that an eleven-year-old was no longer quite an eleven-year-old, but a creature subtly different from the human race, fighting for its survival

.
That makes Will Stanton seem like something out of [b:The Midwich Cuckoos|161846|The Midwich Cuckoos|John Wyndham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172294996l/161846.SY75.jpg|812592] other than being on the side of the good guys. It cuts him off from normal human relations with his family, but not for normal human reasons, but rather for inhuman ones.

The reviewer of my book also detected the influence of [a:Charles Williams|36289|Charles Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217390107p2/36289.jpg], whose novels I have read, and whose influence I freely acknowledge. Interestingly enough [b:The Dark is Rising|11312|Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark is Rising, #1)|Susan Cooper|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1443993959l/11312.SY75.jpg|742] has several scenes which are reminiscent of Charles Williams's novel [b:The Greater Trumps|1232960|The Greater Trumps|Charles Williams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347478510l/1232960.SY75.jpg|1221564]. In both books the family goes to Church on Christmas day for Anglican Mattins, and on the way home rescue a homeless wanderer from a snowstorm which turns into a supernatural blizzard.

I did enjoy reading the book, but I don't think it was as good as the first one.

LKBM reviewed The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising Sequence, #2)

Review of 'The Dark is Rising' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This felt like a low-detail story about an old, sacred mythology, which is great, except it also needs characters with agency, and maybe a plot. Will has no agency--things happen to him and the world around him, and occasionally he knows what to do because Old Ones have Knowledge, but there's no decision making in order to address obstacles. Similarly, the plot feels preordained. It has no agency in its shaping. This is just How Things Go in the old story.

I recall liking it as a kid, but never being super into it. That's sort of how I feel now, but I like it less.

LingLass reviewed The Dark is Rising (The First Book in The Dark Is Rising Sequence) by Susan Cooper (Dark Is Rising (2))

Review of 'The Dark is Rising (The First Book in The Dark Is Rising Sequence)' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Loved this in the 1970's. Re-reading it now some 40 years later thanks to Robert Macfarlane and Julia Bird’s Twitter reading group, starting (like the book) on Midwinter Eve, December 20th. Follow along with the hashtag #TheDarkisReading.